1. I disagreed with the decision of the Tribunal not to grant the provisional measures requested by Ireland, but did not vote against the Order only to make possible, in the particularly difficult circumstances of the deliberations, at least the adoption of the alternative provisional measures that the Tribunal did in the end wish to prescribe in the Order, in accordance with article 89, paragraph 5, of its Rules.

2. The fact that the Tribunal, in the end, did not choose to invoke expressly the proposition that it should deny the requested measures, on the basis that it was not satisfied that irreparable prejudice would be caused to the right of Ireland to be protected against pollution of its marine environment or that serious harm to the marine environment would occur before the constitution of the Annex VII arbitral tribunal, was an important consideration to support at least the Tribunal´s own alternative provisional measures, particularly in view of their own inherent contradictions.

3. The very contradictions inherent in the alternative provisional measures that the Tribunal did prescribe, with the fact that it denied those requested by Ireland, was indeed another paramount consideration that encouraged me to support them, precisely because such contradictions somehow rescued and validated at least some of the important arguments advanced by Ireland for the measures it had requested, and which I myself found largely appropriate, for the reasons that I shall state below. The Declaration made by Judges Caminos, Yamamoto, Park, Akl, Marsit, Eiriksson and Jesus, closer as it seemed to my position, was equally instrumental in persuading me to support the alternative provisional measures ordered by the Tribunal.